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“Is the hunter your pawn, young one? Or are you his?” Esteban grabbed a hunk of Dominique’s hair and pulled his head back. “I will have the truth from you.”

Without further preamble, he latched onto Dominique’s throat. The oblivious Lord of Night screamed and writhed, powerless as a fish in a net. Then twin pools of golden light flared in the shadows. For a breathless moment, Jackson watched comprehension dawn on Dominique’s face.

Seconds later, the lights extinguished, and his face went as slack as his body.

34

Queen of the Night

Fifteenminutesafterthesun drowned in the Pacific, Cassidy felt like she was losing her mind. She paced through her suite, desperately groping for any sense of Dominique. There was nothing. Not even the flicker of a link she had still felt this morning, despite the enormous distance between them.

“When was the last time you called Jackson?” she asked Garrett, who stood, staring out the window, while she orbited the furniture. Ever the vigilant bodyguard, he had played tourist with Cassidy and Francesca again today, and, at Francesca’s insistence, escorted them to dinner as well. Dominique’s mother was now safely tucked into her room for the night, leaving Cassidy at last free to give full rein to her escalating anxieties.

“Every ten minutes for the last four hours. Texted, too. Nothing is getting through.” The man who had carried on an animated conversation all day and all evening was gone. The hard-eyed hunter had re-emerged, looking even more intimidating than usual in his bespoke black suit and red silk tie. If they were in the States, she knew, he’d be packing a gun as well.

He turned to face her. “How about you? I take it you haven’t sensed anything from Dominique yet?”

“Nothing. It’s as if the earth swallowed him up.”

“It did. They went into a mine.”

“For an hour, not the rest of the freaking day. I don’t like this. Not one bit.”

“Operations sometimes have to change on a dime based on new information.” Garrett didn’t look convinced that this was the case here.

“Something is wrong. I’m sure of it.”

“We don’t really know anything yet.”

“So? How long do you suggest we wait? Until they find Jackson’s body and Dominique’s ashes?” she snapped. No phone calls, she could understand. Technical issues happened. No trace of her brand new link with Dominique? There was no excuse for that except the very worst.

“Take it easy, Cassidy. Please.” He held up a calming hand. “Panicking isn’t going to help anybody.”

She huffed out an aggravated breath and stopped to meet his gray eyes. They were the cool calm of a man absolutely sure of himself. “So, if not panicking, what do we do?”

“There’s not much we can do. Not right now.”

Cassidy heard the “not at night” he didn’t say. “But there is someone who could do something.”

Garrett nodded. “Isao, yes. I thought about that. But he doesn’t know me.”

Oh, he knows you, she thought, but was not about to divulge that Dominique’s relationship with the Strikers was a source of great fascination for the samurai.

“Fine. Guess I need to do this myself.” She adjusted her hair and straightened her brand new bolero jacket and silk blouse, which perfectly complimented the new flaring slacks and high heels. The clothes were courtesy of Francesca, who had declared herself Cassidy’s personal shopper during their stay in the city.

“Do what by yourself?”

She snagged her Louis Vuitton purse, also new, from the sofa and stalked for the door. “Talk to Isao.”

Garrett was suddenly beside her. “Wait. You can’t just waltz up to a strange vampire by yourself.”

“Of course not. Isao is not a strange vampire. He’s sired to Dominique. Also, I am his queen,” she said with somewhat more conviction than she felt. Dominique often referred to her as his queen, but she had yet to find reason to believe it, much less act on it, even with the Lord of Night himself by her side.

Garrett propped his hands on his hips, brow folding, but the expected argument did not materialize. “That you are,” he said simply. “And I’m the queen’s guard. Lead the way, my lady.”

She nodded, unable to think of a single thing to say. Though nothing physical had changed with his words, something definitely had changed. Something subtle. Something that made things “real” for her as nothing else had. Queen—in spirit and in fact.

Queen of the night.